“Our enemies are innovative and resourceful, and so are we. They never stop thinking about new ways to harm our country and our people, and neither do we.” - George W. Bush

Monday, February 08, 2016

Clinton’s War in Kosovo - How is it working out Today? Relevance for Tomorrow

“It is hard to know the roots of this (Hillary Clinton) record of disaster. Is it chronically bad judgment? Is it her preternatural faith in the lying machine of the CIA? Is it a repeated attempt to show that as a Democrat she would be more hawkish than the Republicans? Is it to satisfy her hardline campaign financiers? Who knows? Maybe it's all of the above. But whatever the reasons, hers is a record of disaster. Perhaps more than any other person, Hillary can lay claim to having stoked the violence that stretches from West Africa to Central Asia and that threatens US security.”BACKGROUND:

After the Iraq Liberation Act came the 1999 Kosovo War, in which Bill Clinton called in NATO to bomb Belgrade, in the heart of Europe, and unleashing another decade of unrest in the Balkans. Hillary, traveling in Africa, called Bill: “I urged him to bomb," she told reporter Lucinda Frank. TODAY:

RELEVANCE:

Hillary Is the Candidate of the War Machine

There's no doubt that Hillary is the candidate of Wall Street. Even more dangerous, though, is that she is the candidate of the military-industrial complex. The idea that she is bad on the corporate issues but good on national security has it wrong. Her so-called foreign policy "experience" has been to support every war demanded by the US deep security state run by the military and the CIA.

Hillary and Bill Clinton's close relations with Wall Street helped to stoke two financial bubbles (1999-2000 and 2005-8) and the Great Recession that followed Lehman's collapse. In the 1990s they pushed financial deregulation for their campaign backers that in turn let loose the worst demons of financial manipulation, toxic assets, financial fraud, and eventually collapse. In the process they won elections and got mighty rich.

Yet Hillary's connections with the military-industrial complex are also alarming. It is often believed that the Republicans are the neocons and the Democrats act as restraints on the warmongering. This is not correct. Both parties are divided between neocon hawks and cautious realists who don't want the US in unending war. Hillary is a staunch neocon whose record of favoring American war adventures explains much of our current security danger.

Just as the last Clinton presidency set the stage for financial collapse, it also set the stage for unending war. On October 31, 1998 President Clinton signed the Iraq Liberation Act that made it official US policy to support "regime change" in Iraq.

It should be the policy of the United States to support efforts to remove the regime headed by Saddam Hussein from power in Iraq and to promote the emergence of a democratic government to replace that regime.

Thus were laid the foundations for the Iraq War in 2003.

Of course, by 2003, Hillary was a Senator and a staunch supporter of the Iraq War, which has cost the US trillions of dollars, thousands of lives, and done more to create ISIS and Middle East instability than any other single decision of modern foreign policy. In defending her vote, Hillary parroted the phony propaganda of the CIA:

"In the four years since the inspectors left, intelligence reports show that Saddam Hussein has worked to rebuild his chemical and biological weapons stock, his missile delivery capability, and his nuclear program. He has also given aid, comfort, and sanctuary to terrorists, including Al Qaeda members... "

After the Iraq Liberation Act came the 1999 Kosovo War, in which Bill Clinton called in NATO to bomb Belgrade, in the heart of Europe, and unleashing another decade of unrest in the Balkans. Hillary, traveling in Africa, called Bill: “I urged him to bomb," she told reporter Lucinda Frank.

Hillary's record as Secretary of State is among the most militaristic, and disastrous, of modern US history. Some experience. Hilary was a staunch defender of the military-industrial-intelligence complex at every turn, helping to spread the Iraq mayhem over a swath of violence that now stretches from Mali to Afghanistan. Two disasters loom largest: Libya and Syria.

Hillary has been much attacked for the deaths of US diplomats in Benghazi, but her tireless promotion of the overthrow Muammar Qaddafi by NATO bombing is the far graver disaster. Hillary strongly promoted NATO-led regime change in Libya, not only in violation of international law but counter to the most basic good judgment. After the NATO bombing, Libya descended into civil war while the paramilitaries and unsecured arms stashes in Libya quickly spread west across the African Sahel and east to Syria. The Libyan disaster has spawned war in Mali, fed weapons to Boko Haram in Nigeria, and fueled ISIS in Syria and Iraq. In the meantime, Hillary found it hilarious to declare of Qaddafi: “We came, we saw, he died."

Perhaps the crowning disaster of this long list of disasters has been Hillary's relentless promotion of CIA-led regime change in Syria. Once again Hillary bought into the CIA propaganda that regime change to remove Bashir al-Assad would be quick, costless, and surely successful. In August 2011, Hillary led the US into disaster with her declaration Assad must “get out of the way," backed by secret CIA operations.

Five years later, no place on the planet is more ravaged by unending war, and no place poses a great threat to US security. More than 10 million Syrians are displaced, and the refugees are drowning in the Mediterranean or undermining the political stability of Greece, Turkey, and the European Union. Into the chaos created by the secret CIA-Saudi operations to overthrow Assad, ISIS has filled the vacuum, and has used Syria as the base for worldwide terrorist attacks.

The list of her incompetence and warmongering goes on. Hillary's support at every turn for NATO expansion, including even into Ukraine and Georgia against all common sense, was a trip wire that violated the post-Cold War settlement in Europe in 1991 and that led to Russia's violent counter-reactions in both Georgia and Ukraine. As Senator in 2008, Hilary co-sponsored 2008-SR439, to include Ukraine and Georgia in NATO. As Secretary of State, she then presided over the restart of the Cold War with Russia.

It is hard to know the roots of this record of disaster. Is it chronically bad judgment? Is it her preternatural faith in the lying machine of the CIA? Is it a repeated attempt to show that as a Democrat she would be more hawkish than the Republicans? Is it to satisfy her hardline campaign financiers? Who knows? Maybe it's all of the above. But whatever the reasons, hers is a record of disaster. Perhaps more than any other person, Hillary can lay claim to having stoked the violence that stretches from West Africa to Central Asia and that threatens US security.

73 comments:

Camp Bondsteel, a billion dollar US military extravaganza, has many facilities on base for use by the soldiers and civilian employees who live and work there, and can hold up to 7,000 soldiers which makes it the largest US base in the Balkans. The post exchange (PX) is the largest military exchange in south eastern Europe and contains all the necessities and more that someone may need while in Kosovo, including TVs, phones, books, DVDs, CDs, small furniture, video games, computers, clothes, shoes, food, and more, all in its two story building.[ The base also has, arguably, the best hospital in Kosovo; two gyms; two recreation buildings that have phones, computers with internet connection, pool tables, video games and more; one chapel with various religious services and other activities; one large dining facility; a fire station; a military police station; two cappuccino bars, a Burger King, Taco Bell, and an Anthony’s Pizza pizzeria; one barber’s shop; one laundry facilities employing local nationals who do the laundry for those living on base; one press shop; a sewing shop; various local vendors who sell Kosovo souvenirs and products; softball and football fields; and more.

In one of the more bizarre foreign policy announcements of a bizarre Obama Administration, US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has announced that Washington will “help” Kosovo to join NATO as well as the European Union. She made the pledge after a recent Washington meeting with Kosovan Prime Minister Hashim Thaci in Washington where she praised the progress of the Thaci government in its progress in “European integration and economic development.”

Jihad WatchExposing the role that Islamic jihad theology and ideology play in the modern global conflicts

Islamic State on rise in Libya: “Syria all over again”

February 7, 2016 4:41 pm By Robert Spencer 14 Comments

But…but…they’re losing!

isis-libya

“Islamic State on rise in Libya: ‘Syria all over again,'” by Brian Bennett and W.J. Hennigan, Chicago Tribune, February 7, 2016:

As Islamic State forces lose ground in Iraq and Syria, fighters loyal to the group have seized territory in oil-rich Libya, levying taxes at gunpoint and creating sanctuaries to launch possible attacks in North Africa and Europe, U.S. officials say.

The Pentagon has sent special operations teams to gather intelligence and launched at least one airstrike. But the White House so far has resisted calls from some senior aides to escalate the U.S. military role in another Muslim country to counter the potential threat.

Spy satellites and reconnaissance drones have shown the militants building fortifications around Sirte, on the central Mediterranean coast, and training bases for foreign fighters farther inland, the officials said.

A U.S. intelligence estimate last week concluded Islamic State has attracted more than 5,000 fighters in Libya, double the official estimate last fall, making it the extremist group’s largest and most potent affiliate outside Syria and Iraq.

Islamic State threatens to gain a “stranglehold” in Libya and “access to billions of dollars of oil revenue,” Secretary of State John Kerry said, one of several alarms the administration has raised in recent days.

He spoke at a conference last week in Rome where the U.S. and 22 other nations agreed to support the formation of a unity government in Tripoli, the capital, in an effort to restore stability and take on the militants.

Libya has had no functioning central government since the NATO bombing campaign helped a popular uprising oust ruler Moammar Gadhafi in 2011.

‘Jim’ tells tale of executed war reporter, NU grad James Foley

It has faced political chaos and a civil war ever since, with two rival governments battling for power and squabbling militias exploiting the power vacuum.

“In the absence of a true government, (militant groups) have grown unchecked,” said a U.S. defense official, not authorized to speak publicly. “It’s like Syria all over again.”

Islamic State “has a bad habit of growing in places that are ungoverned,” Tina Kaidanow, the State Department’s counterterrorism coordinator said last week at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a Washington think tank.

She cited an urgency at the White House and its allies to move quickly before the group expands beyond its current foothold, which extends about 100 miles east and west of Sirte.

“We don’t want to see the growth of (Islamic State) outpace what will be a long-term effort to build out a successful Libyan government,” she said….

February 8, 2016Obama may be Ensnared in the Clinton Email ScandalBy Jonathan F. Keiler

Perhaps President Obama’s involvement is the reason that the FBI has not yet referred charges to the Justice Department in the Hillary Clinton email case. It may be metastasizing so quickly and so dangerously that not only are agents and lawyers within the agency having trouble keeping up with new evidence of wrongdoing, but that the scandal itself now threatens a constitutional crisis. The Department of State’s refusal to release 18 emails exchanged between President Obama and Clinton through her unsecured home server at best creates a conflict of interest for Obama (as explained by Andrew McCarthy here) while at worst it raises the likelihood that the President has run afoul of national security laws and ought to be impeached.

I always assumed that somewhere in the 55,000 plus pages of email that Clinton belatedly turned over to the State Department there must have been exchanges with the President. White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest said in March 2015 that the two occasionally emailed each other without specifying whether the emails went through Hillary’s private email. Earnest also said that Obama did not look at email addresses, though the President was aware that Clinton sometimes used private email. (Obama had originally said he learned about the private email through new reports -- a typical Obama story -- but backtracked later.) And remember in March, the only admitted concern was whether Clinton had complied with the Federal Records Act.

The more recent State action evidently concerns 18 specific emails that were sent/received over Clinton’s home server. It seems quite likely that in the eighteen emails classified information was discussed as conceived under federal statutes, and as McCarthy points out, one of Obama’s own executive orders regarding dissemination of foreign intelligence. That includes conversations with foreign officials and leaders that are what you would expect the Secretary of State to discuss with the President, and which are born classified. State Department spokesman John Kirby did not deny that these emails contain classified information, but rather only stated that that they “have not been determined to be classified,” claiming that they are being withheld because of concerns over confidentiality between the President and his aides. But again, if Obama and Clinton were not discussing foreign leaders and policy, then what on earth were they emailing each other about?

The White House tried to block the release of emails between Obama and Clinton last fall, with the same claim, denying that they were asserting executive privilege but rather maintaining confidentiality between the president and his top aides. Presumably, these 18 emails are these very same ones. The White House has gotten around using executive privilege to hide the emails by having State block court-ordered FOIA production on these vague confidentiality grounds. McCarthy says that this is a backhanded way of asserting executive privilege and effectively classifying the documents without saying so, since otherwise Obama’s transgressions might be obvious. It is hard to argue with that conclusion. Moreover, State’s action (clearly at Obama’s behest) is circumstantial evidence that the information contained within the emails is indeed classified -- born classified -- and thus subject to security protocols whether marked or not, which both Obama and Clinton violated. And circumstantial evidence is as probative of guilt as direct evidence if a jury (or the Senate) chooses to believe it.

Obama’s claim of “confidentiality” might circumvent the FOIA production order (with State’s connivance) but there is another issue pressing. There is no reason that the FBI should not have access to the Obama/Clinton emails. It is part of the executive branch, and its investigation is confidential, so FBI agents and lawyers should be allowed to review the email exchange. Have the emails been turned over to the FBI? If the FBI requests the emails, and the White House refuses to turn them over, what conclusion could be drawn other than that they somehow incriminate the President, since the FBI already has thousands of similar emails on Hillary?

Beneath all Clinton’s implausible denials and claims of right wing persecution, behind Josh Earnest’s improper insistence that nothing really serious is going on at the FBI, is the very real possibility that Clinton has now enmeshed the President into her scandalous intrigues, with serious constitutional implications. Obama cannot ethically continue to preside over this investigation (which, effectively, he does as the chief executive.) But removing himself would require Obama to actually care about the ethics of the matter, and secondly potentially expose himself to criminal liability. The situation is quite akin to the Watergate scandal at this point, in that government officials have hidden or erased potentially damaging documents, and the President effectively presides over investigations that could subject him, aides, and former aides, to criminal liability.

FBI Director James Comey appears to long have had sufficient evidence to charge Clinton, but seemingly has so far been stayed by countervailing influences..........

If Obama were a man who could actually admit a mistake, and also one that legitimately cared for his country, he would cut the Gordian Knot on this brewing crisis by releasing his email exchanges with Clinton -- redacted as necessary -- taking a mea culpa for being caught up in Hillary’s malfeasance, and throw her under the bus, which is something he does well. There likely would be little appetite in the country for impeachment; Obama might actually earn some credit for doing the right thing, and the Democrats would be rid of a problematic and probably unelectable candidate.

That would put the Democrats into crisis mode, made worse perhaps, by the very real possibility that Vice-President Biden is also exposed to the scandal and thus might not be ready to step in. This might be part of the reason Biden -- with Obama’s evident approval -- declined to enter the race in the first place.

Trump paints policy with a pretty big brush. Has he released any formal policy positions? He seems to be pursuing a demagogic approach to campaigning. In Toronto we had Rob Ford it was like watching a train wreck. Trump reminds of Ford though the damage potential at POTUS level affects many more than a mayor of Toronto.

Yeah, Jack, banishment was the wrong word to use. I forget exactly what he said but struck me as pretty damn stupid when I heard it.

Well, I don't know. We're not losing thousands of dead, or wounded, or spending $180 Billion / Year, in a foreign war.

The Unemployment Rate is down to 4.9%,

and the participation rate has ticked up in each of the last 3 months.

We're starting to get a little Wage Growth, in fact, Median Household Income, deflated by the PCE Cost Index, is at an all-time high.

We're up to 90% Insured (about 95% if you just include American Citizens.) As soon as some of these Republican Governors get their heads out of their asses, and take the Federal Medicaid Money we'll be close to 98%.

I'm not saying that everything is just "perfect," but I'm not sure I would use the term, fubar, either. :)

In the gas business out this way there is something known as 'Red Privilege' - the Reds don't have to pay the White's federal and state taxes on the gas they sell, so they keep the price 2 or 3 cents under the White price....

Also, one time 4 Whites went to the Red station and filmed filling up gallon containers....the Reds were selling a 'gallon' which was exactly 95% of a gallon each time.

This was a big big deal in the papers here some years ago...

If you think it is easy to sue the Reds for such fraud, you are entirely wrong.

You are looking at either Federal, or Tribal, court.

You're screwed, by the cost of the first, and the obvious outcome of the latter.

MEXICO CITY — A reporter was dragged from her home by armed assailants before dawn Monday in southern Mexico and had not been seen since, authorities said.

Crime-beat reporter Anabel Flores Salazar was kidnapped in the Gulf coast state of Veracruz at about 2 a.m. (3 a.m. ET) Monday.

The Veracruz state prosecutor's office said police were looking for her. The kidnapping took place near the city of Orizaba, where she worked for a local newspaper.

In August, five gunmen burst into a bar in Orizaba and killed a reporter who was sitting at a table with a reputed drug gang boss.

At least 15 journalists have been killed in Veracruz since Gov. Javier Duarte took office in 2010 and three more have disappeared. His administration has been criticized for suggesting many of those reporters had links to drug gangs or were victims of common crime.

Recent disclosures show that media mogul Haim Saban, a controversial supporter of Israel, is spending millions of dollars to put Hillary Clinton in the White House after Clinton reiterated a promise to use her influence to oppose a growing campaign to temper Israeli militancy through boycotts, divestments and sanctions.

Readers may recognize Saban’s last name from Saban Entertainment, the Israeli production company responsible for bringing the children’s television show “Power Rangers” to after-school audiences in the 1990s. Saban is also a musician who reportedly composed the theme song to “Mighty Morphin Power Rangers: The Movie.”

Sarah Lazare reports at AlterNet:

Haim Saban and his wife Cheryl together contributed $5 million to the Hillary Clinton Super PAC—Priorities USA Action—between 2015 and 2016 alone, according to disclosures available on OpenSecrets.org, affiliated with the Center for Responsive Politics.

While the contributions are not surprising from long-time Clinton-backers, $3 million of them notably poured in after the presidential hopeful authored a letter to Haim Saban in July of 2015, seeking advice on “how we can work together” to defeat the growing movement to Boycott, Divest from, and Sanction (BDS) Israel.

In the note, Clinton touted her record of defending Israel “at every turn,” including her obstruction of efforts to hold Israel accountable for war crimes. “I have opposed dozens of anti-Israel resolutions at the UN, the Human Rights Council, and other International organizations,” she wrote.

“I condemned the biased Goldstone Report, making it clear that Israel must be allowed to defend itself like any other country,” Clinton continued, referencing a United Nations fact-finding mission into Israel’s December 2008 to January 2009 military assault on Gaza that killed more than 1,400 Palestinians.

WASHINGTON — Bolstering her opponents’ claims that presidential hopeful Hillary Clinton is beholden to Wall Street and the wealthy elite, newly released donation records show that her biggest donor is controversial billionaire investor and liberal “kingmaker” George Soros.

A report filed Sunday with the Federal Election Commission by Priorities USA Action, a Clinton campaign super PAC, showed that Soros donated $6 million to the group in December, making him, by far, the biggest investor in the group. Haim Saban, the Zionist Hollywood billionaire, and his wife Cheryl donated a combined $3 million that same month. Other powerful donors from the finance industry, Donald Sussman and Herb Sandler, gave $1.5 million each.

Not only do these represent Clinton’s overall top donors, but they’ve all given generously more than once. Soros previously donated $1 million to Priorities Action PAC, bringing his total support for that particular super PAC to a massive $7 million in 2015. In all, he donated more than $8 million to pro-Clinton groups last year.

Meanwhile it's been recently reported that the commune, or kibbutz, where The Bern 'worked' for a brief time in his youth was sponsored by the Soviet Union. The Soviets were up to something in Israel at the time, but just what is a little murky. The Bern was an enthusiastic cog in this machine.

At any rate it can be described as a Marxist/Leninist/atheist/Zionist commune, which might make sense to The Bern, but to few others on the planet, including zero current Russians.

Whether it would be 'nutzier' to vote for The Commie Totalitarian The Bern or the current aspirant of Tbe Clinton Criminal Enterprise for President is beyond this writer's ability to discern.

in recent days, Trump appeared to stray across an inviolable line in the modern GOP platform: a robust, if not unflinching, support for the State of Israel. In an interview with the AP on Wednesday, Trump seemed to lay the onus for securing a long-elusive peace agreement at the feet of the Israelis, and not the Palestinians.

“I have a real question as to whether or not both sides want to make it,” Trump said, before explaining that his concerns predominantly reside with “one side in particular.” He then added:

A lot will have to do with Israel and whether or not Israel wants to make the deal — whether or not Israel's willing to sacrifice certain things. They may not be, and I understand that, and I'm OK with that. But then you're just not going to have a deal.

What’s particularly notable here is the ominous coda. By (vaguely) interjecting the idea that without a peace deal Israel will continue its occupation of the West Bank and its growing Palestinian population, Trump is echoing the frequent admonishments of President Obama and John Kerry (as well as other Democrats, and a number of Israeli leaders), who continue to warn that without a comprehensive peace deal, Israel will cease to be a Jewish and democratic state.

After refusing to answer the question just one month ago, Donald Trump now says Jerusalem should be recognized as the capital of Israel.

The leading GOP candidate, who recently cancelled a meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that was set to take place in January, was asked Tuesday whether believes Jerusalem is the capital of America's closest ally in the Middle East.

"The answer is yes," Trump said in an interview with The Hill.

Trump, who's second in the latest Washington Examiner presidential power rankings, was heavily booed by a crowd of Jewish Republicans in early December after he declined to say whether the U.S. should designate Jerusalem "the undivided capital of Israel."

WASHINGTON — Donald Trump said he would move the US Embassy to Jerusalem.

“They want it in Jerusalem,” the front-runner among Republican presidential candidates said in an interview posted Tuesday by The Brody File, a Christian Broadcasting Network show. “Well I am for that 100 percent. We are for that 100 percent.”

David Brody, the CBN journalist, had asked Trump whether he agreed with GOP rivals, including Sens. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, and Marco Rubio, R-Fla., who have pledged to move the embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem once elected.

Trump’s agreement seemed to be an about-face from remarks in December at the Republican Jewish Coalition, when the real estate magnate refused to commit to recognizing Jerusalem as Israel’s undivided capital.

So Jack, your out of time, out of context posts once again prove your distorting legacy...

I could care less. After all, the Palestinians want to declare East Jerusalem their capital. The only practical effect it will have one way or another is on world opinion. If Israel and the US calculate they can keep pushing the envelope, that is up to them.

Magnificent Ronald and the Founding Fathers of al Qaeda

“These gentlemen are the moral equivalents of America’s founding fathers.” — Ronald Reagan while introducing the Mujahideen leaders to media on the White house lawns (1985). During Reagan’s 8 years in power, the CIA secretly sent billions of dollars of military aid to the mujahedeen in Afghanistan in a US-supported jihad against the Soviet Union. We repeated the insanity with ISIS against Syria.